Left3Dead and Source 2

[Gary]

Isn't Titanfall also 60FPS on consoles? I can understand it wouldn't be able to compete with games on UE3/4, Cryengine or Frostbite. Besides those engines being developed by huge companies that selling their engine is important to them. They all run at 30FPS. More time to do more expensive operations. Though, I am disturbed by the lack of more dynamic lights. CODMW1/2/3 and BO had tons of shadow mapping tossed around AND from the sun. I really thought that was cool even if the shadows lacked a filter on X360.

I haven't really been able to judge Source on shadow mapping. Sure, Portal 2 had a nice looking lighting from their flashlights/env_projectedtexture. But it fucking better. They had ONE shadow map rendered at a time. That rarely covered more than an entire room. Any game that does outdoor shadows has multiple shadow maps with a huge amount of coverage(which also has to do all this other culling and transforming). CS:GO does have pretty nice sun shadows. But I haven't got to play that game for so long, since the beta. And anything before ASW had awful shadow mapping. While ASW itself is probably not too bad, but I haven't tested shadow mapping in it for a while. I might take a HL2 or L4D2 map and load it in ASW while placing a few awesomely placed projectedtextures to see how it run(i'll though combine/rebels/zombies/infected in there so there's stuff going on).


ANYWAYS; I'm still curious as to what L4D3 will look and play like. Could end up being pretty cool. Though what interests me more is what the hell they have had to do with HL2EP3. Think about it, it's been in dev so long. It's most likely going to be on a branch of Source2, but it's probably going to end up with mixed quality aspects and design. Since it likely didn't start out on Source2, there's going to be some assets and designs that were built around older constraints/features, and some(and obviously the more important ones) that are built with far fewer and more modern constraints/features.

[Stormy]

valve has some really talented artists.

In terms of pure artistic awesomeness, I think valve pales horridly in the shadows of say, ID or Naughty Dog. Valve has their technical art locked down and are probably the leaders in what can be done with a model through code, but they don't care about art. For instance the facial animation features in Lef4Dead and Team Fortress 2 were, and still are, a great technical feat, but from an artistic flair point of view, their art is consistently minimalist in order to downplay their lack of focus on art. This is fine, they have always said they are a software/technology design company. They don't focus on art as much as other games companies do. Irrational Games focus way more heavily on expression and art than their technical artistry, for instance. The only really art-focused game they have is Dota 2, and they are pretty much outsourcing the art for that.

That said, I don't resent this about Valve, but I think it would be more accurate to say they have some really talented technicians, as artists aren't really Valves forte.

Also, they will never support their engine as much as Unreal do UDK, or Crytek do CryEngine. Valve make games and allow you to mod them. They don't want to license their engine out, much less support it for their modding community. While Valve tout that they support their modders, they really appear to prefer letting them flounder for themselves. I have said it before, this is the way you separate the wheat from the chaff. If a modder can get through the shit that they have to deal with in source and produce something incredible, they have what it takes. It's like baptism by fire.

I think source 2 will be a purely modern engine, not anything groundbreaking. And the toolset won't be anything incredible. But whatever, by the time I have gone and come back from South America, they might have just announced the new engine. I can't decide whether I love or hate Valve.

[Armageddon]

Their lack of good art really shows in CS:GO even though it was outsourced to a company that Valve absorbed. The maps are so inconsistent, some are almost all models while others are mostly brushwork. Aztec is all water splotched painterly and Dust is tan sharp detailed maps. Monastery and Vertigo have so many little seams in both the models and the map. Everything looks very amateur.

[source-maps]

I have said it before, this is the way you separate the wheat from the chaff. If a modder can get through the shit that they have to deal with in source and produce something incredible, they have what it takes. It's like baptism by fire.

I understand what you're trying to say.. but.. you shouldn't have to jump through unnecessary hoops to get a freaking model in game for example.

the thing that is pissing me off is that 9 years have passed.. and there was plenty of time to program simple 'not time consuming' additions to the SDK or editor that could have enhanced the workflow/pipeline by such a great extend.. it's really a spit in the face to modders when we still have our mouths open and the guys at Valve just woke up after a long night of sleep so the spit has that disgusting morning breath flavor

but no, Valve cares about the modding community.. especially in areas where it will get more customers to their own games.

[Jeeves]

...but from an artistic flair point of view, their art is consistently minimalist in order to downplay their lack of focus on art.

I always figured that they continue to use that style, which was considered to be cutting edge in 2004, because at the time they wanted scalability of the source engine; an art style that mandates inherently low poly-counts, scales easy. If you all think back to 2004/05 when the Athlon 64 had just come out, and a significant amount of people were still running 1ghz Pentium 3s, it would have made fiscal sense to allow the games to run on these obsolete machines, while concurrently supporting the new high end machines with HDR capabilities to keep the engine relevant.
At some point some bright spark at valve, realising that they either had to: enter into a perpetual arms race with the likes of John Carmack and Unreal, or cater to the largest hardware demographic possible, which perhaps was made possible with an art style that people liked more -- and that scaled well graphically. Now that valve presumably has bucket-loads of money from steam, it may make sense for them to enter into the engine wars, with an engine that could succeed Cry-Engine; with enough time and money anything is possible.

What would be poetically ironic?: a Valve acquisition of iD Software.

...but no, Valve cares about the modding community.. especially in areas where it will get more customers to their own games.

I wonder if Valve considers modders a hindrance ?. I mean they can't release their own tools to us for obvious reasons, and the tools they give to us are cut down builds of what they have, that they must pay devs to work on for free.

[Xyos212]

I think CSGO has some great looking maps. Yes some are lacking but for the most part there is a ton of detail in most of them (my opinion )

The reason I moved from the UDK back to Source to model was because of my love for CS after CSGO came out. God the frustration of making custom models and materials compared to the UDK was hard to get used to after so many years with the visual material editor of the UDK. Not being able to scale models like a brush in the editor, having to jump in and out of the .qc to adjust stuff, it was quite annoying, but after a few dozen models I had a pretty good method going.

If I could ask for ONE change it would be dynamic lighting for ALL lights. Currently only light_enviornments produce those nice crisp dynamic shadows we all love. Any other light uses the old lighting method. Yes its possible to get decent results with tweaking the lightmap scale, but it never looks as good.

Art wise I think DOTA 2 has some really cool nice modeled creatures. The thing about DOTA is that those cool details are "baked" into the model instead of being represented properly with nice shaders. Ya normal maps are there with speculars and rim lighting, but their normal maps have always been lacking.

Im not trying to be nasty though towards Valve. They create some amazing work, I really just wish they would invest some money into an improved engine.

[source-maps]

you're saying you aren't happy with the time they quickly invested in the new portal 2 puzzle creating tools

[Xyos212]

you're saying you aren't happy with the time they quickly invested in the new portal 2 puzzle creating tools

I completely forgot about that. Im not a big portal fan I dont know much about it, but is it popular? Is the portal puzzle scene big?

From looking at the users on Steam games its not, and I feel the time they invested in something like that could of went towards better refining their engine and work pipeline.

[source-maps]

that's what I think too tbh

[tripmind]

this showed up in the steam newsfeed today, and was removed a few minutes later

[Dives]

GranPC is the guy working on The Stanley Parable. Just some trolling.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/granpc

[ScarT]

I don't get why anyone would be stupid enough to believe that was official.

No, this is not official, nor was it posted by a Valve employee. The "All news" feed includes announcements from 3rd party developers now, and it seems someone took advantage of that power for evil.
I have plans to make it more clear which game these announcements are coming from, but for now you can click on the announcement's title to go to the actual post in it's corresponding game hub. In this case the author deleted it, but you get the idea.